Arlene Rosen

This seminar course is an introduction to some of the major guiding anthropological concepts concerning relationships between past human societies, culture and the ‘natural world’. The course will include lectures, readings and discussions on ecological concepts and processes, human ecodynamics, landscape sustainability, landscape heritage, human perceptions and symbolization of their environments, political ecology, human behavioral ecology, the ecology of colonialism, and human impacts on the environment. Throughout the course we will discuss how to generate problem-driven research based on the above concepts using the technical skills of environmental archaeology. 

This course will cover how and why climate change has impacted human societies over the past 20,000 years until the present day. We will examine why climate changes, the methods for recording climate change, and discuss case studies of the varied responses of past human societies to climate change in different geographic regions and time periods with varying socio-political and economic systems. We will discuss aspects of resilience and rigidity of societies, and issues of environmental sustainability. Finally we will compare and contrast modern responses to climate change on a global scale with those of past societies.